Constitutional Conventions

Theories, Practices and Dynamics

Nicholas Barry, Narelle Miragliotta, Zim Nwokora, Haig Patapan

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040309636
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Constitutions
• Index: Law

This book analyses constitutional conventions as a powerful but largely neglected framework for studying the law and politics of constitutions.

Constitutional conventions are the unwritten rules that inform and circumscribe the political behaviour of individuals, organisations, and a political system. They are as important as the formal legal rules that define written constitutions and shape modern states; yet, unlike formal written rules, conventions have received only limited scholarly attention. This book considers conventions as a lens to theorise and to analyse the institutional dynamics of contemporary constitutions. Interrogating constitutional conventions in a wide variety of contexts – including in Westminster parliamentary systems, in presidential systems, and in non-democratic regimes – the book offers new perspectives for understanding diverse aspects of constitutional politics such as the capacity of conventions to constrain populists, how conventions influence constitutional transformation, how they reflect and reshape core democratic values such as citizenship and constitutional identity, and what they reveal about the character of authoritarian regimes. The book thus demonstrates how the dynamics of conventions shape the very character of constitutions.

The book will be of interest to legal theorists, constitutional lawyers, and political scientists.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: New Research Directions in Constitutional Conventions
• 2 What Are Constitutional Conventions?: Common Law, Legal Positivism and Liberal Perspectives
• 3 Morality Versus Strategy: Constitutional Conventions Through the Lens of Political Motivation
• 4 Conventions All the Way Down: The Emergence of Parliamentary Conventions Over MP Qualifications
• 5 How Constitutional Actors Resist Conventions Without Breaking Them: The Case of UK’s Salisbury Convention
• 6 How Do Constitutional Changes Affect Conventions and Constitutional Identity?: A Case Study of a Republic in Australia
• 7 Populism and Constitutional Conventions
• 8 The Breakdown of Constitutional Norms in the United States
• 9 Strategic Development of Constitutional Conventions on Succession Under Authoritarian States: The Case of China
• 10 Constitutional Conventions in Czechia and Hungary: When Two Are Doing the Same, It Is Not Always the Same
• Index